My friend Paula turned 50 last year. It’s been more than a decade since she and her husband realized it was time to accept that they wouldn’t have children. For ten years she’s been working through the mess—the grief, the anger, the sadness, the despair, the big, big question of “what am I am going to do now that I won’t be a mother?” And because her older brother was a confirmed bachelor, Paula also felt pressure from her parents to produce a grandchild, even though they never said it out loud.
But that was a long time ago. If you ask Paula now, she’ll tell you she’s “cured.” She’ll tell you that, most days, she doesn’t think about the fact that she’s childless. She and her husband travel, they have a broad circle of friends, she’s been able to hop on career opportunities that would have been difficult with small children. She enjoys her friends’ children and she enjoys handing them back to their parents. In her candid moments, she’ll say her life worked out better than she’d expected and might not have been so great if she’d had the children she once so desperately desired.
Life is pretty good for Paula.
And then her brother fell in love, married, and shortly thereafter announced he would become a father. Paula called me in tears. She was utterly blindsided by her tearful reaction.
“I thought I was over this,” she said. “I wouldn’t swap places with my brother for anything. A newborn at 53? Nightmare.”
She told me her parents were over the moon, that her mother was telling everyone that she was going to be a grandma. “At last,” she told people, giving Paula a meaningful look.
“At last?” Paula said to her father. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
And that’s when her dad opened up. He admitted how “difficult” all this waiting and longing had been for them. He’d felt left out too, he told her.
She understood, but his confession found its way deep inside Paula, to that one small dark spot that had yet to heal, and poured salt into all those old—and now reopened—wounds. The guilt and shame that consumed her in that moment was overwhelming, and the tremendous weight of that was part of what took her by surprise. Her brother had made her aging parents happy, had given them the thing she couldn’t. The family torch had been passed and it wouldn’t be to Paula.
When I talked to Paula again a couple of weeks later, she assured me that she was going to be okay. She said a part of her was looking forward to being an aunt and that her big grown-up self was happy for her brother and her parents.
“But,” she added, “people always ask how long it takes to get over not being a mother. I always thought seven or eight years was about right, but now I think maybe the answer is ‘never.’”
I fully agree that the answer for me is never. I’m not in abject misery like I was in years past. I can see the places in my life when I was able to give more to family and friends. I also see where I was able to devote more time to my job, thus becoming a better pediatric physical therapist. I cherish those parts of my life, but the pain of not having children never leaves me. Overall it has mostly faded into the background, but sometimes it comes surging back, often taking me totally by surprise.
Never. You learn to go on. You learn to life with it; but you never get over it. The emptiness and void are always there. Some days you can put it out of your mind and others it consumes you.
The wound heals. The scars are forever.
Thank you so much for this post…..this has happened to me so many….felt so devastated and confused as I have been blindsided by another person’s pregnancy news…..I really feel for paula…..I am so very sorry and sad…..infertility really sucks…..but we are strong and a sisterhood…..we are blessed
I am 55 and it’s still hard…
I feel you do get over Grief. It is probably not fully understood until you have lost those close to you. I lost my Dad, Mom, three dogs and my husband.
We never had any children and yes I missed having children and Grieved over not having them but after the loss of my husband I understood what it meant to live the life you have left and live the life given to you.
There are still times I miss my parents, my husband and having children but not the Grief I endured at first.
Grief ends, sorrow pops up from time to time.
You can live a fully productive life but it takes work and alot of positive living
I say Grief has an end and you do get over loss. The more loss you have the more you begin to realize the shortness of life & the importance of living life to the fullest. Yes you will still have sadness because we are human but it’s not the same as when loss first occurred and you couldn’t see past the loss to move forward with life…eventually you can
I dont know why it wont let me post unless its because of what I am trying to say…instead of venting I am trying to tell of my experience with Grief
I have found the more I am faced with loss and Grief that yes Grief and loss does have an ending and it does get better.
You can have a life after you loss of not having a child, not having your Mother, not having your father, not having your dogs, not havig your husband.
You may have a sad day here and there but it is not all day and you get up and go on with your life. It is called Moving Forward. After the losses in my life I have decided to make my life more meaningful than ever and become better instead of bitter.